The View From/Scarsdale; Friendship in Instanbul Weaves Into Love Story

SOMETIMES things just click into place. Like a flight of stairs in which one step simply follows the other; like a plot so tightly constructed no other story line seems possible; a relationship can start, progress and find permanence with the ease of something preordained.

So it was with Duygu Chilingiroulu and Tolga Tanguler, two young people who met last year in Istanbul and married 11 days ago, on a Wednesday evening on the front lawn of a home on Heathcote Road here. The bride wore a sophisticated column of white silk; the groom, a dark suit; the guests -- all 20 of them -- applauded as the couple took their vows. Next year, in Turkey, they will remarry, in front of their parents and 500 of their closest friends. But it was on this unseasonably warm night, at the home of Millicent and Martin Kaufman, before Village Justice John H. Galloway 3d of Scarsdale, that they became man and wife.

''Have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage?'' the justice asked. ''Will you love and honor each other as man and wife for the rest of your lives?'' After the murmured ''yesses,'' after the bride and groom had each spoken the classic phrases ''in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health,'' Justice Galloway said, ''I, in accordance with the authority vested in me by the laws of the State of New York, pronounce you husband and wife.''

Later, amid congratulations, laughter and champagne, Ms. Chilingiroulu turned pensive. ''It is so strange,'' she said, ''how different people can play different roles in your life at different times. Who would have thought that I would be here, in the Kaufman house, on Sept. 16, 1998, with my friends from Turkey, at my own wedding?''

In fact, this turn of events was set in motion eight years ago when Ms. Chilingiroulu was 17. She came to Scarsdale for her senior year in high school through the American Field Service Program. Mrs. Kaufman, who owns a travel agency, and Mr. Kaufman, a lawyer, and their children David, Andrew and Kristina (now a doctor, a medical student and an art history student, respectively) were her hosts. Ms. Chilingiroulu remembers great times, especially with Kristina, then 13 and happy to have an older sister of sorts, and a close relationship with Mrs. Kaufman, which at times was no different from a real mother-daughter bond, including arguments about curfews, dating and homework.

At the end of the school year, there were tears, goodbyes and promises to keep in touch. The family did write and talk by telephone, Kristina Kaufman visited Ms. Chilingiroulu in Turkey, but it was not until earlier this month that Mrs. Kaufman was asked to play a quick and crucial role in Ms. Chilingiroulu's life.

''A day or so after Labor Day, I got an E-mail from Duygu,'' Mrs. Kaufman said. ''She wrote that Tolga, her fiance, who is a graduate student in business at the University of Michigan, had entered a lottery held by United States Naturalization and Immigration Services. Through this lottery, he got a green card that allows you to live here as a permanent resident. But in order for her to qualify for a green card under him, as his dependent, she would have to file the application as his legally married wife by the end of September. Otherwise, she would have to wait another three years.

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''This meant she needed to get married by the end of September. I E-mailed back to her. I wrote that I was going on a trip Sept. 22, but that I would see to it that she and he would be married before then. Then Tolga called me on Friday the 11th of September, and said that Duygu would be coming in a day to the United States and that they planned to go to New York City Hall to be married. I said, 'Oh no, you don't, give me just a few days, and I will make a real wedding for you at my home.' ''

That is exactly what she did. A quick impersonal event would not do -- this, she decided, would be a real wedding for a woman who, even though separated by miles and years, was like a daughter to her.

Guests arrived at 6 at the Colonial-style house, mingling in the living room while a Keely Smith jazz recording played softly in the background, gathering in the twilight on the front lawn, where potted russet chrysanthemums and a few red leaves among the green trees gave a feeling of impending autumn to an otherwise summery night. At 6:30, the judge arrived, met the couple and told them and others how inspired he was by their love: ''I talk to couples like this. I will refuse to do this sort of thing if I think it's just a marriage of convenience for immigration purposes.'' Then friends and family lined up in two parallel rows, forming a grassy aisle between them, down which Ms. Chilingiroulu walked, the Kaufmans on either side of her.

After the ceremony, there was grilled salmon, chicken with ginger soy sauce and a wedding cake with white icing shaped into roses and ribbons. There was a cutting of the cake, more champagne toasts, then Ms. Chilingiroulu tossed her bouquet of white roses and baby's breath into a small knot of giggling, unmarried women. In every respect, it was a real, festive wedding in miniature. The only unusual touch: instead of white napkins there were red -- Mrs. Kaufman is Chinese and in China, red is the traditional color of good luck.

Most outstanding, however, was the simple fact of Mr. Tanguler's and Ms. Chilingiroulu's feelings for each other. Both attractive, articulate and worldly, their sophistication did not preclude a classic love story. ''Duygu owns a company that arranges stays in Europe and America for Turkish students. I was working for the University of California at Santa Barbara as a foreign student recruiter,'' Mr. Tanguler said. ''We met at a conference in Istanbul.''

They went to dinner with some other people. ''We talked and we talked and we talked. The next day I said to a friend, she is the woman I am going to marry. Later that same day, she called me and said, 'Maybe I'm crazy, but I think we are soul mates.' ''

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A version of this article appears in print on September 27, 1998, on Page WC14 of the National edition with the headline: The View From/Scarsdale; Friendship in Instanbul Weaves Into Love Story. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe